Review: Bajasim – San Jose Del Cabo Airport for FS2004

Los Cabos, Mexico, is one of those tourist spots that you don’t think about when travelling to Mexico. However, it’s sister city of Cabo San Lucas is probably more familiar to you. Bajasim has dropped a fresh look to airport scenery add-on’s that I’m going to show you for MMSD (SJD).

San Jose del Cabo International Airport sits at an elevation of 374ft (114m). It has one runway, 16/34, which is 9,842ft (3,000m) long. Certainly long enough to handle all but the largest of the widebody’s. It is also an airport that will pose a challenge to the inexperienced because there is no ILS or NDB approaches for this airport. It’s VOR and VASI. The VASI is hard to see until you are 3-4 nm away so you better have your piloting skills sharpened. The approach is over the Sea of Cortez for runway 34 and what a beautiful approach it is with mountains on the left and right side and a nice sandy beach.

You may be wondering where this city is. The Baja Peninsula is on the west side of Mexico and is famous for sunny days, beautiful golf courses, sportfishing (Marlin in particular), and great resorts.

Installation

It is an executable file and they tell you to install the scenery in the FS2004 default folder but I installed into a separate area and it worked just fine.Â You will have to activate the scenery which is easily done via the installation process. You have to add the scenery to FS2004 manually and there’s a separate manual for this if you are not experienced in this art. The files are not named so that you can easily figure out what files is for which scenery element so it’s trial and error if you want to remove something you don’t like. I don’t think you will want to anyhow.

The scenery comes with two manuals. One is the installation and some airport information including an Airport Diagram. The other manual is mentioned above to activate the scenery in FS2004.

Pay attention to the warning to leave autogen on at least the sparse setting. If you don’t you will be missing some of the custom landclass and resort buildings. The scenery takes up 103mb after installation.

The Statement

Here are the claims that Bajasim has stated and let’s see if they are backed-up by the scenery itself.

Claim: Realistic buildings placement.
Truth: Looking at a Google Earth view of the airport I can’t argue with that. They even added off airport buildings.

Claim: Extreme detail/Extreme render techniques/High resolution textures.
Truth: I am really pleased with the look of these buildings. It’s as if they were created on a CAD system by a engineering firm used to impress the potential buyer. It’s almost too clear even close up. Look at the wall picture below for example.

Claim: Texture & poly optimization/ Our design system gives high detail with low FPS impact.
Truth: Again, I have to agree because I did not notice any significant frame rate drop as I have with comparable scenery.

Claim: Smooth taxiway lines every where.
Truth: They are and it makes taxiing much easier.

Claim: Photoreal ground textures/ Breathtaking ground textures.
Truth: Yes they are but due to FS2004’s limitations they do not appear any better than other textures I’ve seen, but not worst either.

Claim: Main buildings 3D interiors.
Truth: Well… yes they do appear 3D from the outside but when you go inside the terminal, for example, you see the objects are painted on the wall and are not actual objects.

Claim: The most amazing and realistic night textures.
Truth: Take a look below. Some of the shadows on the ground objects look the same to me at night as they do during the day. The lighting does look good however.

Claim: Reworked Landclass.
Truth: Yes and you even see the famous Golf Courses to the south of the airport.

Claim: Ultra realistic glass textures.
Truth: OK they look good but in some places you see black X’s on the ground where they lie. Not sure if it’s supposed to be shadows or a box to hold the plants in.

Claim: Custom vehicles, vegetation, signs, etc!
Truth: No doubt. These don’t look like default scenery objects to me and are complete with ground shadows. Unfortunately, they are permanent shadows. They are part of the object and not cast by FS2004.

Claim: Landmarks and hotel area modeled.
Truth: They sure are. Near the golf courses you’ll see the resort area on approach to runway 34. Nothing spectacular but a nice addition.

Claim: Reworked shore.
Truth: Yes it is and is much better than the default shore line.

Claim: The best scenery for a Mexican airport available!!!
Truth: I’m not stepping into that trap. You’ll be the judge by looking at the pictures. It certainly is one of the best I’ve seen but I haven’t seen them all yet.

Conclusion

The price may seem a little high for an airport that isn’t popular amongst simmers. The developers have given me a fresh look to FS2004 that I didn’t think was possible on FS2004 and I’m delightfully surprised. There’s allot of work gone into this add-on so the price will reflect the quality you can expect.